


To lose a name

by Searofyr



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Searofyr/pseuds/Searofyr
Summary: From the journal of Ystrima, 2E.The meeting of a High Elf raised in the Skyrim moors and designated as a sacrifice and an Imperial on an errand and a notion to take things that are not hers.Premise inspired by an ESO item description (item in question being the tattoos).
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character, Original Male Altmer Character(s)/Original Female Imperial Character(s) (Elder Scrolls)
Kudos: 2





	To lose a name

I’m not usually much for these things. Journals.

Back when we were learning from Netka Blood-Reader, Hertram pointed out the “duty of the oghma” (it’s “the onus of the oghma”) and how man has to write because of the enslavement by the Ayleids and being kept illiterate all those years.

“That’s how long ago?” I asked, pointlessly.

Hertram said, “Not long enough to forget.” Then he gave me that accusatory look.

I told him, “I’ve got a lot of things in my blood, but I’m not an Ayleid.”

He gave that a moment’s consideration. Then he said, “You’re an elf.”

True a statement as ever there was one.

So I continued writing. You don’t want to remind them that you’re an elf. Everyone’s happier forgetting about it.

My father left me with my mother on the Summerset Isles. She lived a steady life; he didn’t. And he had no use for a new-born brat on board of his ship.

Someday when my father was back in port, my mother dropped me off with him with a note. She wanted to preserve her steady life and had no use for an ill-fathered brat in it.

My father took me along to sea. The crew wasn’t happy about it, though.

When the ship anchored in Skyrim, he gave me to the Nord cabin girl Tjalna to raise among her people. Gave her some gold to settle down and not trouble him anymore. Gave me a new name to fit in with the Nords (nice try), and that’s the last thing I ever got from him.

Why he thought Tjalna had a use for me I don’t know, but men tend to assume that of women.

As for Tjalna, she started raising and teaching me, and then she found a merchant from a good family that she wanted to ensnare and resorted to old magic. She went to Netka, a clever woman in the moors. There will always be clever men and women in the moors. Tjalna had to get something extensive done, I don’t know what; I was too young to understand these things. But I understood I was the price.

And so I was left with Netka along with a few other children with fates like mine, to be raised in the old ways.

And so I finally had a use. For a while.

Turns out no matter how much you try to make them forget you’re an elf, they have an inconvenient tendency to remember. Usually the times they remember the most are the times that things are going the worst.

Such as when a local nobleman of some sort has a fatally ill daughter and none of your old folk magic can save her.

Or when another nobleman’s son got himself fatally wounded in some skirmish and you try to compensate for the dead daughter and go the extra few metres beyond the acceptable, and he survives but isn’t quite right after that and spouts nonsense occasionally and there are glowing runes covering the scar.

Or when you try to hold back on the less acceptable kinds of magic again, and giants attack a nearby farm settlement, your wards fizzle and die, and everyone but the old cook is dead.

With the giant problem still not solved, the backwater kinds like to resort to backwater methods of negotiation, such as throwing a sacrifice at them as appeasement. And who’s the first to go? That’s when they remember someone is an elf, and the elf is prone to messing up anyway. Good enough as justification, or so they hope.

And next thing you know, you’re out there in the wilderness with badly done swirling tattoos (no need for aesthetics on someone that’s not going to live much longer anyway), tied to a stake on a clearing amidst scattered bones, and awaiting your fate.

Was it fate? Or was it idiocy for staying way beyond adulthood in the foolish hope of having a home and something to do?

Doesn’t matter in the end. When you’re marked as a sacrificial offering and presented to bloodthirsty giants, you wonder about it, you curse your fate and your bad life choices both, and then you pray. And then it doesn’t matter that everyone sees the elf. The High Elf to that, even though that’s just part of the mix. When you’ve been raised for the most part among the clever people in Skyrim’s moors, you turn to Shor.

Or maybe that’s just me, because even in the hour of greatest desperation, when I needed a sure and safe and guaranteed intervention, I made the mad gamble of praying to a dead god. Say about absent Aedra and malicious Daedra what you will, you still have the least chance of aid with someone who’s too dead to hear you or do anything at all. I don’t know how _clever_ my upbringing made me, but wise I am not.

The clearing was deserted except for the howling wind, until the too heavy steps started approaching from behind me. Unnerving and slow. I couldn’t gauge how far away they were, but they were coming closer.

And then lightning struck, over and over, in a haphazard circle all around me, then further away, then I heard the roars of pain. Smoke and the smell of something burnt wafted over on the wind.

The bones around me shifted, moved, first slowly, and then fast, lightning struck once more, directly in front of me, causing me to close my eyes. When I opened them again, a humanoid bone structure was reaching out to me.

Behind me, I heard a faint female voice, carried over by the wind: “That’s my sacrifice. You can have another, if they give you another. But this one’s for me.”

A grumbling voice, cut off by thunder.

Lightning struck a tree with a loud crack.

More smoke coming over, making me sneeze.

A long, slow silence, and then some more rumbling sounds. Then they wandered further away and grew quiet.

A fast succession of more lightning strikes.

Then lighter steps approached me. Not giant-sized, these ones. The bones in front of me clattered to the ground in a pile.

Then I saw her for the first time. She looked neither like a warrior nor a clever woman or indeed anyone suited to the region, and least of all like someone capable of scaring off a tribe of giants. But there she stood. Like an Imperial merchant or some such on a pleasure trip, bundled in furs, short dark hair and a fancy staff. But I recognised the light eyes and skin, the kind others find disconcerting. The kind that bring about storms and raise the dead.

“We share an ancestry, I think,” was what I said.

Her smile was knowing and mechanical. “Absent father? That’s what it was with me.”

“Yeah. I got a short time on the ship and a Nord first name. Then it was back to absence.”

She nodded. “Ship sounds nice, I’d have liked that. I got a Sea Elf first name and books. Not too bad. Teaching me some tricks if I managed to learn on my own. Which I did.”

“I just learned… Well, what they do around here. Involves a good deal of corpses, too, but mostly animal. The rest is frowned upon.”

“It isn’t in Cyrodiil, but it’s debatable how well that works for the country. But I still did it. So.”

“So what now?” I asked. “First, let me thank you. Though I hope my situation didn’t just get worse. Wouldn’t surprise me with my luck.”

“Well, I just won, didn’t I?” She cocked her head, raised an eyebrow. “I told them you’re my sacrifice. Is only fair, they say my people from my father’s side are nothing but pirates.”

I nodded, as if in contemplation, felt the back of my head chafe against the stake. “The ones I met sure were. Will you free a fellow pirate?”

“That was the idea from the start. I hate this kind of thing. Barbaric if anything ever was. Let’s see.” She mustered me and the stake. “Seems my construct wasn’t up to the task. Why should my bone creatures be dextrous when I’m not either? Let me figure that out…” She walked around me, must have inspected the knots keeping me in place. Then I heard the scraping of metal against cloth, felt the ropes tense up as they were being cut, and I was free.

Rubbed my wrists, then my arms and legs, to no avail at first. You stop noticing the lack of blood flow until it’s back and it’s agony.

“Can I?” she asked, reaching out with her hand.

“Gladly,” I said, since there was no more malice to be expected.

She laid her hand on my arm, and something flowed through me, making me feel better instantly.

“This is coming from my own reserves, so I’ll need an inn or something soon. I suggest we don’t go back to where you used to live. Let’s get far away. Best thing you can do is flee. And I’ve got enough myself. Town, then ship?”

I blinked. “I will admit I had expected freedom.”

“Do you need help or not? If you go home, they’ll just sacrifice you again. Or kill you right away for besmirching their honour, or however they work here.” She paused. “Of course you’re free. You were always free.”

“Gracious,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I know, isn’t it? No, you’re welcome.”

“May I ask what you’re actually doing here? You don’t look the type to be wandering the wilderness here. I doubt you’ll take that as an affront either.”

I won a smile. “I don’t, no. I was actually in Solitude, applied for a bard education, but they didn’t take me. I don’t play any instrument well enough, and I lack the talent. The poetry was alright, but it wasn’t enough. Then I was drinking away my sorrows. The taverns will still have you, even if you’re a failed musician. And then in my room, a ghost snake talked to me, and asked me if I wanted to do something actually useful.”

“A ghost snake,” I just repeated.

“Yeah. And you don’t say no to ghost snakes, especially not after… I don’t know how much mead I’d had. But enough. And so I agreed, and next thing I was here.” She pointed at the woods further back. “Back there, and the snake showed up again and showed me where you were.”

“I thought I made bad decisions.”

She smiled. “Well, I’d also heard Shezarr’s been showing himself in ghost snake form a few times to people. That’d be significant to me. So I just hoped it was the right ghost snake.”

“Well, now you’ve got me interested.”

“Really?”

“I happen to have prayed to Shor not long before you showed up and caused your little world’s end on this clearing.”

And her face broke into the most irresistible pleased grin, the cat that got the cream and noticed it was laced with moon sugar. “Well then.” She cocked her head. “You’re at least a bit my responsibility now. Want to travel together for a bit? I wouldn’t mind some help either.”

I couldn’t say no at that point. “Count me into the number of fools listening to ghost snakes. It helps when you’ve just been rescued. My name is Ystrima.” I paused. Considered whether to continue.

“Got a by-name? Want to keep it or lose it?”

“It was Ystrima Skin-Carver. After one of the incidents that landed me here in the end.”

“My view is… Lose it. They lost the right to name you with what they did here. By the way. Word of mouth on the Gold Coast says there’s a Telvanni mage there in exile in a lighthouse who excels at getting rid of tattoos. Including the kind of thing you don’t want people to see. Anvil, it’d be. Want to go together? I want to get back home anyway.”

“Colovian then?”

“Nibenese, but my mother was smart and got us out of the city. First to Skingrad, and then Chorrol, but that was no good either, and in the end, we landed in Anvil. Better to have everything teeming with assassins that leave normal people alone than foreign occupiers who think they’re building the next Empire.”

I held out my hand.

She shook it.

“Anvil it is,” I said. “And your name?”

“Tircione Istacidia.”

“That’s better than Skin-Carver, without a doubt.”

Her light eyes flashed. “You want it?” Then she snorted and shook her head. “I think I’ve still got that mead somewhere in my system. He said he’d take care of that, but…”

I matched her laugh. And tried hard not to say yes. I had no excuse such as mead either. Blood-loss? The cold? A return from existential dread? “Sounds like him to leave some in place and see the results,” I said. Mustered her expression between cockiness and self-consciousness. Really too much. “And I already am in the habit of listening to ghost snakes. I really have no excuse. Not even the blood loss and trauma.”

“Do you need some mead so you do have an excuse? We should get you some food anyway. And me, too. I’m drained.”

“That sounds good. I take it you have no idea where you are and where to go from here.”

“You’d be right about that.”

I sighed, I didn’t even know why. Everything, presumably. “Lucky for you that you freed a local. Let’s get to a farm and get horses. Can you ride a horse?”

“I can’t.”

“Even luckier for you then. I can. We’ll manage. For the record, I didn’t say yes.”

Low laughter erupted from her. “Will you? In time?”

“I’m saying nothing without mead in my defence.”

I lasted a bit under a week. Doesn’t matter how much people see the High Elf. In this matter, too, I acted like a Nord. Lately, those kinds of decisions have served me well.

Besides. Fastest way to lose a name is to get another.


End file.
